


No Greater Love

by Barkour



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna smells something funny about Kristoff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Greater Love

**Author's Note:**

> A sex comedy, without the sex! Just what everyone most wants to read, I'm sure.

Anna took the stairs two at a time, her skirt yanked high so her knees were free. The stair case was a narrow one, closed off from the halls, meant for servants to pass quickly from the great corridor to the smaller hallway that led to the stables, so she’d little fear anyone would see her with her knees bared and an inch or two of her thighs on top of that showing too. At the bottom of the stairs, she threw the door open, stepped out, and ran her nose right into Kristoff’s shoulder. He grabbed the door frame. Anna grabbed her nose, and swore.

“Why are your arms so big?” she demanded, glaring at him over her hands.

His hair was wet and dark with it. When he’d grabbed onto the wood for balance, small droplets had sprayed across the sleeve of her dress. His eyes dropped, and then Kristoff immediately looked back up to her face. Anna let go of her skirt and clasped her other hand to her face, so he wouldn’t see her blushing. Her skirt slipped gradually down her knees.

“Big … moose,” Anna said.

“I’m not big,” Kristoff said, and he let go of the door frame so he could cross his arms. If he meant to shrink down into himself, he failed immensely.

Anna tested her nose. The bone felt straight enough, so she supposed it hadn’t shattered. She eyed his wet hair, half of it plastered to his head and half of it sticking out. 

“Is it raining outside?”

“I don’t know,” Kristoff said, and he shrugged one of those awful, big shoulders.

He must have hit his head, she thought. “I didn’t hit you with the door, did I?”

“What?” Kristoff furrowed his eyebrows. “No. I was coming the other way.” He gestured, away from the stables.

She let it go. Kristoff was a man of at least three mysteries, all of them silly. Maybe someone had dropped a pot of water on him and he was too embarrassed to say it.

“Well, I’m glad I caught you,” Anna said, and she snatched up his arm. “I was coming to find you and I thought you were in the stables so that’s where I was going to be, looking for you.”

He stumbled after her. She was turning as she spoke, and he was right there at her shoulder, all of him, nearly bent over her she’d dragged him so off-balance, or he’d let her drag him. Another little drop of water landed on the very end of her nose. A second drop spotted her cheek. She almost tripped: mid-step, she’d forgotten to put her foot back down. Kristoff reddened and drew away from her.

“Sorry,” he grumbled. His hand rose and then flopped down again. “What’s the rush anyway?”

She hitched his arm higher, so that their elbows were locked. “What rush? I thought we could go outside and see the market, but if it’s raining—” They traipsed together down the hall, back the way Kristoff had come, Anna taking long, quick steps and Kristoff short ones to stay even with her.

“I don’t think it’s raining,” Kristoff said. He tipped his nose up and sniffed. “It doesn’t smell like rain.”

Anna stuck her own nose up high and took in a deep whiff. All she smelled was the spiced sausage she’d eaten as a snack an hour ago, after sneaking it out of the kitchens, and flowers close by, near enough she thought that Kristoff had stuck a bouquet in his vest. She peeked: his vest was flat over his broad chest. Anna deflated.

“How can you smell rain?” she asked, walking more slowly. She didn’t mean to be glum. She knew that Kristoff wasn’t very good at playing the part of the gentleman lover, like the princes in her books. It was too much to expect he’d bring her cut flowers from a stall in the city or even a handful of wild blooms plucked up from the side of the road. Likely she smelled a vase of fresh flowers set on a small table in another room, perhaps the next one over.

“The air gets thick,” Kristoff told her. He was relaxing beside her, some of the tension in his arm fading out. The muscles weren’t as hard against her hand. “It’s humid and when you take in a deep breath, the inside of your nose feels wet. That’s when a good summer rain is coming. You’ve never smelled that?”

“We usually kept the windows closed when it looked like rain,” Anna said. “And also closed most of the time when it didn’t look like rain.”

“Oh,” Kristoff said. He scratched at his nose. He looked down at her, sidelong. “So where were we going again?”

Anna considered. They’d wandered into one of the wider halls, a gallery with benches set at regular spaces along the walls and sumptuous carpeting to match the velvet hangings that fell from the ceiling nearly to the floor. The hall was poorly illuminated, with only two lamps lit at either end, but the doors had been open. The benches gleamed: someone had been cleaning in here not very long ago. She’d carried him here without a thought. In one of Anna’s books, a sordid one by an anonymous author from Corona, a duchess met with her lover in a hall like this one; they’d done some rather shocking things on a bench.

“Do we have to go somewhere?” Anna said. She squeaked at the end of it and coughed into her hand to hide that high note.

Kristoff unhooked their arms and passed her hand to his far one. Yet after all that maneuvering, he hesitated before he thumped her on the back with the flat of his hand. Anna blinked up at him, her fist still at her mouth. Her throat was very dry. She’d worn a dress with a low back, a fashion popular in the southern countries, and so her nape was bare, her shoulder blades too. Summer had nearly ended, but the heat had lingered on as if the world wanted to make up for the blizzard Elsa had brought in May, and so Kristoff’s hands were as bare as the back of Anna’s neck. He’d worn a very light linen shirt and the sleeves stuck faintly to his arms, as though he’d sweated and were damp beneath the cloth. 

Kristoff glanced toward the doors at the end of the hall, several yards away. Just once, he patted her shoulder.

“We should probably,” he said, “uh. Go find. Someone.” His ears were red; they reddened more. The collar of his shirt was spotted with water drops, and the whorls on the inside his ear nearest her shone. He was staring very fixedly at that far-off doorway.

Anna said, “Oh, no! My—ankle?” and hauled him over to a bench. She had to dig in with her heels to do it, but when she’d got him over there, she plopped theatrically down and stuck her leg out, her foot hanging limply.

Kristoff squinted at her again. He was always doing that. “Your ankle. When did you hurt your ankle?”

“You don’t have to always be so suspicious,” Anna said. She wiggled her leg back and forth. Her foot jiggled. “I’m not trying to trick you.”

He kept on squinting at her, just long enough Anna thought she ought to just give up. She really hadn’t meant to pull him into the hall; they’d wandered that way entirely by accident. She’d only wanted to take as long a route as they could. As for designs, she had none, but it was perhaps that he hadn’t brought her flowers and he’d chickened out of touching her bare back that had Anna wishing she did have the sort of salacious mind as the duchess in that book from Corona. 

Anna sighed and let her leg fall, and Kristoff sat beside her on the bench. She jumped and whacked her elbow against the stone wall. 

“Let me look at it,” Kristoff said, as Anna rubbed at her arm. “Your ankle.” 

He held his hand out to her. The fingers unfurled. He had large hands, callused, and a scar across the palm of the right hand that she thought had come from a very bad rope burn. She’d the idea, a very strange one, that Kristoff meant for her to pivot on her rear on the bench and hitch her skirt and her leg up and just drop her foot down into his hand like she would a sack of carrots. Romance did not accompany that thought. Sacks of vegetables were not renowned for the atmosphere they lent, and she didn’t like the thought that her ankle shared an allure with carrots.

“Wait,” Kristoff said, before she could shove her foot into his hand. “Never mind. I should be down there.” And he slid right off the bench to crouch in front of her.

Anna sat, stiff as stone. She should never have read that book. The duchess had lifted her voluminous skirts up, high over her knees, and invited her lover to kneel between them. She should never have read the book, and she shouldn’t have taken the long way around, and Kristoff was reaching to cup her ankle in his huge, rough hands. 

Anna shot up to her feet, so suddenly she accidentally kicked Kristoff in the chest. He swore, the same way she’d sworn when she’d just about busted her nose on his shoulder, and fell sprawling to his back.

“Oh, look at that!” Anna said brightly. “It’s all better! Thanks, Kristoff!”

He scowled up at her from the floor. “You know—you’ve been acting weird since you ran into me—” Kristoff got up onto his elbows.

“No, I haven’t,” Anna said. She shook her skirt out so that it fell neatly down her legs, precisely as it ought to. “And if I was acting weird—”

“Which you are.”

“It’s probably because I hurt my head on your stupidly big arm,” Anna finished breezily. She offered him her hand.

Still frowning, Kristoff took it and stood. Anna had very little to do with that. When he was on his feet again, they were close, very close, so very, very close that if Anna took one itsy-bitsy step forward she’d run her nose into him all over again. A blush ran up his throat. He blushed often, but only, it seemed, when they were so near to each other. Anna’s stomach flipped. That smell of flowers had thickened. It was like scenting rain, the way Kristoff had described it.

“You took a bath,” Anna said, surprised.

“No, I didn’t,” Kristoff said to the wall.

She said, slowly, “But you already took one three days ago. And you only take a bath once a month…” 

Elsa had mentioned this to Anna, shortly after Kristoff had moved in to one of the grooms’ rooms over the stables. He had begun sometimes dining with them in the evening, though he got skittish when Elsa asked him how he liked his room. The hay was fine, he’d say, and Elsa would look at Anna as if to ask, He sleeps on the hay? He _had_ for a week or two, but that was mostly because he’d been camping out in the stables next to Sven, but lately he’d slept in the room on the bed, even. Still, Anna knew that Elsa hadn’t forgotten that first odd dinner when he’d shown up with straw in his hair, smelling strongly of horse feed and other, less delicate horse-related things.

“He’s very aromatic,” Elsa had said diplomatically that night after dinner, when Anna had asked Elsa what she thought of Kristoff. “Not as, you know, someone who helped me save Arendelle,” Anna had said in a rush, “but as—a person that I…like.”

In the dim gallery, Kristoff, just before her, smelled like flowers and fresh water. His shirt was stuck to his damp skin not because he had sweated, but because he had washed. His hair had dripped onto his collar: bathwater and not rain water.

“Why,” Anna said, struggling, “would you take another bath? In one week? You?”

“Okay, I get it,” Kristoff said loudly, “I stink! That’s the whole reason why I took the bath, so I wouldn’t smell up the place—”

“Stop!” Anna threw her hands in his face. Her fingers were rigid, her palms flat. She was thinking furiously. “You took another bath—”

“Yes!” Kristoff shouted. “I took another bath! I’m sorry! I didn’t think you were going to make such a big deal about it! I just thought that, since everyone’s always talking about how I smell, and since I was going to be—I mean, we were—since you’re here—” He clapped his hands over his eyes and made a groaning sound, like a reindeer stuck in mud.

Wonderingly Anna said, “You took another bath for _me_?”

He groaned again and hunched his shoulders. His fingers carded up through his hair, slicking it back. He was glaring dourly at the floor.

“Yes,” he said, “okay—I took another bath for—” and the rest of it was crushed as Anna leapt up at him.

Kristoff staggered backward. She’d fisted her hands in his vest, and a button dug into the second knuckle of her right hand. He set his hands on her back to steady her and then his palms flew back as if he were scalded. Anna kept kissing him. As kisses went, it was inelegant, not at all sophisticated, her lips mashed against his teeth. She had hardly any experience and Kristoff even less, and still they had managed more expert, if chaste, assignations in the past few months, here and there. His hands settled, fluttering, on her waist. His posture weakened. The angle of his jaw softened. The hands so skittish at her waist steadied. He cupped her hip in his right hand. 

She drew back but stayed as she was, with her heels arched off the ground. “You smell incredible. You smell _amazing_.”

“It’s just the soap they had in the bathroom,” Kristoff said, shrugging. 

Anna smoothed the creases she’d made from his vest. Her hands wandered somehow to his shoulders. The vest fit him perfectly, but the shirt clung just a shade too tightly to his arms, a consequence of dressing too soon after he’d bathed or not drying thoroughly enough before he’d dressed. Her head swam. She felt as if she were floating right off her toes. She wondered what he’d done with the towel or if he’d even used a towel, or if her head was about to burst.

“Well, that soap smells amazing,” Anna said, “because you smell amazing. You should definitely use that soap next time. And you should definitely do a next time. You should do a lot of next times.”

Kristoff said, “I didn’t think I smelled that badly…”

“You smell so good,” Anna told him, “that I want to just—eat you.”

She wished she could swallow her tongue. She thought Kristoff might have swallowed his. He stared at her and his face was so red that Anna, thinking he was about to collapse, grabbed him by the vest again and shoved him onto the bench. He went splaying. He clutched at the bench to stay upright. She’d nearly managed to push him flat on his back again, not that he even really fit on the bench, not with his elbow braced against it and his thick legs sticking off it and his eyes so huge as he went on staring up at Anna.

“Ohhhh, my gosh,” Anna said. “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. That was really—” She couldn’t think of the right word for it, and then she could. “Wild,” she said weakly.

Kristoff swallowed. The knob in his throat worked, bobbing. This was definitely not something a princess should do, Anna thought. She had behaved very properly over the last few months. That was Hans’ fault; she hadn’t wanted to rush into anything after that. If Kristoff loved her, or if she loved him, or if they could love each other or would with the adventure firmly behind them: Anna had wanted to know before she made any more promises. She could have been pushing Kristoff on his back for _ages_.

He swallowed again. Anna wanted to do what the duchess would have done and sit in Kristoff’s lap and lean down and bite his throat. Her head was very close to bursting. Kristoff took a deep breath. Anna’s heart raced ever faster, till she thought that might burst too.

“I don’t think it’s raining,” Kristoff said. “If you still wanted to, to go see the market…”

Anna said, with as much regality as she could say such a thing, “No. I don’t believe I wish to see the market.”

“Then,” Kristoff said, “what do you—do we—should we—what?”

“I think,” Anna said, quivering, “that, since you took a bath, we should, um, take advantage of that, by, uh.”

His eyes were as huge as hers felt.

“Doing this,” Anna said, and without any grace at all she sat on his lap. She banged her knee on the wall as she did it, and Kristoff grunted as all the wind went out of him.

“Sorry! I thought that would be—a lot more—” She flapped her hand.

His hand was on her thigh. The breadth of his palm burnt her through the layers of her skirt and underclothing. He held her like that, his hand wide and warm on her leg, as he squinted at her all over again.

“A lot more _what_?” Kristoff demanded.

“Worldly?” she suggested tentatively. “Did it work?”

“How would I know?” His scowl was offset by the color in his face. “It’s not like anyone’s ever sat on top of me before.”

“Well,” Anna said, “it’s not like I’ve ever sat on top of anyone before!”

“Well,” Kristoff said, and then he stopped. “Wait—why are you sitting on top of me?”

“It was in a book I read,” Anna said.

“What kind of books are you reading?”

“Very worldly books,” Anna said grandly. “Exciting books, where ladies do—do this.”

And she leaned down to kiss him again. His fingers tightened, digging into her thigh. He’d rucked her skirt up just a bit past her knee when she sat up again.

“Oh,” Kristoff said, dazed. “I think I read that book too.”

“So you know what happens next,” Anna said, relieved she wouldn’t have to explain it.

He blinked up at her and said, “I don’t remember,” so earnestly she knew he told the truth.

Explaining it would have taken too much time. Anna showed him instead. She tried to, anyway, but they both fell off the bench. That was for the best, probably. She hadn’t really known what she was doing. Kristoff rolled over. His arms were on either side of her. Gently he touched her forehead.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Anna said, clutching her head.

“Good,” Kristoff said, dropping his hand, “because that was a really stupid idea.”

“You liked it!” Anna protested.

“Is that why you dragged me in here? To roll me off a bench?” 

Kristoff was looking her over again, as if he thought she had some sort of nefarious plan. His hand ghosted down her side, and the indignation vanished: he was worried and trying to cover it. He’d taken a bath for her, and he was afraid she’d hurt herself falling off the bench, and Anna loved him so much she wanted him to pin on the ground. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage that. He really was very big. She wanted to pin him to the carpet, and she wanted to run her hands all over his chest, and she wanted to bite his shoulders, which wasn’t something the duchess had done but Anna thought she might like it anyway.

“You could’ve just asked,” he was saying, all bluster.

“Oh,” Anna said. She considered this. “So, _will_ you make out with me?”

Kristoff cracked his head on the bench.

*

Snow dusted the carpet in a thick ring all around Olaf. He was singing to the fire, and the heat of it had his little cloud puffing away. Olaf looked up as Anna walked through the parlor. She was singing, too.

“Oh, my goodness,” Olaf said. “Did you fall down some stairs?”

“Nope,” Anna said, “just a bench.” 

She found the book wedged under a settee cushion. A passing servant had startled them, and she and Kristoff had jumped off the floor, Anna trying to fix a braid thoroughly unbraided, and loudly wished each other luck finding whatever it was they were looking for. The servant, spooked, had said, “I won’t say anything, ma’am!” and Kristoff had said, “You didn’t see anything,” in a menacing voice, but at the doorway he’d paused and glanced back at Anna and he’d gone hot in the face all over again. His vest was missing the second button.

“You know, I think books are just wonderful,” Olaf sighed happily. “You learn so much from them.”

“Yep,” said Anna, “you do.” She meant to read it again that night.

Olaf gazed longingly into the fire. “If only I could read…”

“Elsa could teach you,” Anna suggested. It wasn’t at all the same sort of thing, but how thrilling it had been, acting as if she could teach Kristoff. She sighed, just as happily as Olaf had sighed. “Oh, Olaf—Kristoff took a bath!”

“A bath?” Olaf echoed.

“And he took one three days ago,” Anna said, “and then he took another one today, and I think he’s going to take another one in a couple of days or—well, soon.” Hugging the book to her chest she looked out the window across the harbor, to where the sun was beginning its descent in the clear, blue sky.

She’d her hand up his vest, feeling out that strong expanse of chest, and Kristoff had said, “I’m going to take a bath every day for the rest of my _life_ ,” and kissed her all up her jaw to her ear.

“Good,” Anna said, trying to kiss his temple but only getting a mouthful of hair for her troubles, “because it was _awful_. You smelled horrible—” She broke off to spit the hair out.

“You saying that doesn’t really make me want to kiss you.” But he’d nuzzled at her as he said this, and Anna had kicked her legs in the air for the glee of it, his nose in her hair and his lips on the soft skin behind her ear and her right hand on his breast and her left hand—lower, around on the other side. 

“Why are you laughing?” Kristoff brought his head up. Like Sven would, he sniffed at her.

“’Cause I’ve figured you out, Mister Grumbly,” Anna said, “you’re just a big—silly—softie!” And she’d punctuated each pause with a kiss: at the side of his nose, the broad plane of his cheek, the downturned corner of his mouth. He would have argued with her—he was taking the breath for it—but Anna said, “You moved in, and you’re even sleeping on an actual bed sometimes, and you took two whole baths in one week—”

“Only because Ma said I should,” Kristoff muttered.

“Was she giving you advice?” Anna pinwheeled her legs again and got tangled up in her skirt. “Was she giving you advice about _me_? Oh, my gosh! Did you _ask_ her for advice?” She struggled to get her knees free.

“No,” Kristoff said, “maybe—that’s not important!” He reached absently to help untangle her skirt. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this.”

Anna swung her leg up and over him. “Well, I know why,” Anna said, “and it’s because you love me. You do! Ha!” She threw her head back to go on cackling.

“S-s-so?” he managed, struggling as he always did when he had to articulate anything like an emotion. “You love _me_.” 

Kristoff had flung it at her. He’d been leaning over her, braced on his elbow. The vest was half-opened, and she thought she might have popped a button off it. She’d had the button in her hand, and now she did not. He was frowning at her, but his eyelashes were low; he was peeking, rather than glaring. Anna smiled at him. She did, she thought. She did; she _did_.

“I do,” she’d said out loud, and—oh, it was so much nicer, how he looked at her, so much sweeter than how more-beautiful-than-the-sun Hans had ever looked. He blinked, and he wasn’t gruff any more but boyishly shy, and he held himself very still over her, as if he were afraid even to breathe, and she thought all of this was true; all of it was real. His breath was very warm. When he gulped, she could see how it rippled in his throat, all the way down to his collarbone, clear even through his shirt. 

“You do?” Kristoff asked. 

Her toes curled in her slippers.

“I do,” Anna said, reaching to cup his wide, not-at-all-beautiful face, “I think.”

And Kristoff had smiled so hugely at her that his eyes had crinkled up and his slightly crooked teeth, the ones he was forever trying to hide, had showed, and Anna had punched the air and said, “All right! Okay! Take off your shirt!” and Kristoff had said, “What?” and Anna had said, “Or—wait, what did I say?” and that was about when the servant had said, “Oh! My God! I’m so sorry!”

Something cold—smooth, hard—mashed Anna’s nose. She jolted: she’d leaned right into the window. She straightened, looking down at the book she was holding. It was not a button. Anna rubbed at her nose.

“Oh, Anna,” said Olaf, “that’s wonderful, it really is. But what does that mean?”

“What does what mean?” She looked, bewildered, at him. She’d forgotten Olaf was there.

“That Kristoff took another bath.” Olaf winked and tapped his long nose. “Can’t smell, you know. It’s a little disheartening. People are always telling me I need to stop and smell the roses, but I just can’t. I try not to let it get me down, but people sure do love roses.”

“It means,” Anna said, thinking of roses and then of flowers and Kristoff’s wet hair and his shirt clinging to his arms and mostly the way he’d smiled at her, like he thought she was the most— _everything_ sort of person in the world, “that he loves me.”

“Huh,” said Olaf. “I thought maybe it meant he was dying.”


End file.
